There’s Hope in the Wind

Everywhere you lck Oook in the Drive-By Media, they are already celebrating the Obama victory. It will be a landslide many say, akin to Reagan’s 1980 sweepto defeat incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Yet, if you look between the lines, there are reasons for hope and optimism pointing to a possible McCain victory.

Over the last two weeks, polls have been tightening. The tracking polls have gone from a 6-8 point swing for Obama down to a 2-5 point swing, with the Gallup poll having Obama within two. Even the AP/Yahoo poll has McCain wtihin 4 of Obama. While I am not one to look at the RealClearPolitics average as anything close to accurate, it is useful in looking at where polls are at in relation to previous elections. The current RCP average, as of today, October 18 at 4:45 PM, shows a 6.5 % lead for Obama. Four years ago, the RCP average showed John Kerry with about the same lead over Bushwith about the same amount of time to go before the election. While one should not look to that as an accurate poll number, it does give one the impression that McCain’s current position is not insurmountable, and that the race probably remains tight.

In other signs of weakness, Obama is now digging into the old Democratic playbook, telling voters in Virginia (a state he supposedly has wrapped up) that McCain wants to take away Medicare! Next thing you know, he’ll be telling people that McCain wants to take candy from babies, and starve children by taking away their school lunches. This is not the sign of a hope-and-change, on the way to victory campaign. This is the sign of a campaign that sees the jaws of defeat grasping at their so-called “certain victory.”

I am not saying that McCain is going to win, or that Obama is likely to lose. If I were to handicap it today, I would still have to give it to Obama, but it is nowhere near as dire as those in the media would like us to believe. In a year when conventional wisdom has repeatedly been wrong — from SWMNBN’s defeats of Obama in New Hampshire and Texas, to McCain’s surprise victories in New Hampshire and Florida, the conventional wisdom along with the polls have consistently been lacking when it comes to the actual result.

The important message in all of this for Conservatives is to not get discouraged. There are still two and a half weeks until election day. So much can still happen, including an October Surprise or two. It is up to us to fight and ensure the highest possibility for a McCain victory on November 4. To quote Sean Hannity, don’t let your hearts be troubled. It is far from over, and there are signs of hope blowing in the wind.